Burhanuddin Rabbani

Burhanuddin Rabbani (20 September 1940-20 September 2011) was the President of Afghanistan from 28 June 1992 to 27 September 1996, and from 13 November to 22 December 2001. He led the Northern Alliance in the war against the Taliban emirs in the 1990s, and was briefly president in 2001 after NATO occupied Afghanistan, but he was killed on his 71st birthday in a suicide bombing.

Biography
Rabbani was born in Badakshan in the Kingdom of Afghanistan in 1940 to a Persian-speaking Tajik family. He graduated from the University of Kabul in 1963 with a degree in law, and when the Soviet Union-backed Democratic People's Republic of Afghanistan (DPRA) took over in a coup in 1978, Rabbani founded a new opposition network, the Mujahideen. In the 1980s he fought against the Russians with United States training and PRC guns. After the communists were forced out of the country in 1992, he became the President.

However, the Taliban movement of Maulavi Mohammed Omar took control of Afghanistan in 1996 after taking Kabul from the new government, and Rabbani became the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. He was still recognized as the leader of Afghanistan by the United Nations, and in November 2001 he became president after an American and British invasion force took over from the Taliban and extremists. However, Hamid Karzai was elected in December 2001 to replace Rabbani, and Rabbani led the United National Front movement against Karzai.

Death
In 2011, on Rabbani's 71st birthday, two Taliban soldiers entered his house, claiming to be commanders that sought peace. One approached Rabbani for a hug, but the two detonated explosives, one of the bombs hidden in a man's turban. Rabbani and three other Afghan politicians were killed in the blast, and the United States, Japan, and the UN condemned the attack.